Good morning, my name is
Dianne O'Connell, but more importantly, I am Ellen Shullaw's
daughter. I want to thank each of you on behalf of my family for
joining us this morning to honor the life of my mother. My husband is
here: Chuck O'Connell, as are our two daughters, Jennifer Ellen and
Jessica Dianne. I would also like to introduce my closest girlhood
friend Linda Stoikowitz Cannon and her husband Bob Cannon, and their
two children, Alex and Stephanie.

My heart is very heavy.
Although I am an ordained Presbyterian minister and hospital
chaplain, this particular service will, undoubtedly, be the most
difficult of my life so far. But I am certain that you will bear with
me. Let us open with the invocation. Please join me:

Invocation

Gracious Lord God, you have
called us from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners. You
have said to us, "You are my servants. I have chosen you and have not
rejected you." You have told us, "Do not fear, for I am with you; do
not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help
you; I will uphold you." Lord, we need you today. Be with us as we
celebrate the life of our loved one and friend Ellen Shullaw. Comfort
us, as we comfort one another, at her death. Teach us to be grateful
for this life even in the midst of sorrow at its closure. We ask your
blessing upon the people gathered here today, family members and
friends. We pray these things in the name of your Son, who taught us
to pray with these words:

Thank you. I want to thank
Ms. Triezenburg and Ms. Walstra for the music this morning and also
Chaplain Komtyatte. I should also take a moment to honor the folks
who cared for my mother during the last three months of her
life:

Nancy Kane;

Cynthia Gunkel, Hospice nurse;

Joan Clare, Hospice social worker;

Dee Deinma, the woman from Hospice who helped with
her personal care;

Sylvia Komyatte, the Hospice chaplain; and most
especially a woman who could not be here this morning, but who is a
Very Special Lady, Mrs. Josephine Ziolkowski.

I also want to thank Carol
and Gale Osgerby, Carol Kutak, Harriett Pinkerton, Linda and Bob
Cannon, Generosa Novak and each of you for being such very good
friends throughout my mother's life, but especially during these past
very trying months. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Talking with each of you,
and many others who have telephoned during the past week, I have had
confirmed something I always knew, but it's nice to know that someone
else knows it too: My mother Ellen Shullaw was a strong, capable,
generous, loving and very special person.

I have been gone from this
area for the past 35 years. So, I haven't had the opportunity to get
to know each of you as I might well have liked to. I have heard
names and a few lovingly humorous stories -- but I haven't known you.
During these past three months, that has changed somewhat, and I am
grateful. Thank you.

Most of us here are old
enough to recognize that life comes in pretty distinguishable phases.
My mother's life was no different. There are several of you here
today who have known Ellen Shullaw for more than 40 years -- Jack and
Iola Hammond and Linda Cannon. Marie Plack met my mother through her
career in Real Estate, a field she entered in the early 1960s. she
worked for the Arquilla family for many of those years, through
Burnside Construction and the Arquilla Company.

My mother was the first
resident to move into the condominium building where she lived for
some 27 years. Condominiums themselves were pretty new as a concept
back then, and I remember her patiently explaining to me the legal
differences in ownership and maintenance responsibilities. There are
several people here today who have shared that condo building -- with
all its challenges and decision-making -- with my mother and have
become close friends during the intervening years.

Following her retirement
from the business world, my mother struggled to find new challenge
and new friends with whom to enjoy her changing life. She found both
challenge and friends in playing pinochle and bridge. Many of you are
here today, and thank you so much.

Each of you has known a
special slice of my mother's personality and life. I hope you will be
willing to share a bit of it with the rest of us later in the
service. I have known a certain slice of my mother, as well, and I
hope you will allow me to share some of that with you, too.

My mother was born December
5, 1921 at Toledo, Ohio, the daughter of Benjamin C. Bartel and Alma
Mary O'Harra Bartel. Alma later became Alma Wagner and was a frequent
visitor to our home during my childhood and youth.

My mother's own childhood
and youth were spent in the Toledo and Findlay, Ohio areas. Following
graduation from Burnham High School in Sylvania, outside Toledo, she
first moved to Findlay and then to Cleveland, Ohio, where she worked
for the Canfield Oil Company for a couple of years.

During that time she met a
girl named Marion in the boarding house where both young women were
staying. They became life long friends. Marion, now 80 and living in
Tucson, Arizona, wrote my mother constantly throughout her illness
and truly wishes she could be here today.

Marion says my mother
always blamed her for talking her into joining the United States
Coast Guard during World War II. Marion remembers doing no such
thing, but it could not have been too bad a decision in that my
mother's military service was something of which she was always
terribly proud. You will see a newspaper article written just last
year in the Hammond Times telling of that service. The article and other pictures
and stuff are included in the Memorial Scrapbook at the back of the
sanctuary. You are invited to look through it at your leisure and
during the luncheon following the service.

My mother met and married
my father while in the Coast Guard stationed in New York City. I was
born the day the Japanese surrendered, August 14, 1945.

The next 13 years were ones
of struggle -- as are the early years for most young couples. My
parents purchased a newspaper in Mantua, Ohio, and operated that for
a time. They sold the paper and re-located to Pekin, Illinois, and
Hudson, Iowa, before pulling into Lansing, Illinois, one summer day
in 1952.

That means my mother has
lived in either Lansing or Calumet City for 47 and one half years.
There were only eight years in Calumet City, which seems like a short
time in comparison to 47 and a half years. She sold Real Estate
throughout the south and western suburbs, but she loved Lansing and
she chose to live and die right here.

So, each of you know a
little bit about my mom and have known her for a longer or shorter
period of time. But I venture to say that I am the only one here
today who has known her for more than 50 years.

And there may be some
talents she had of which you were unaware. For instance, when I was a
child, she painted in oils and sculpted. I brought one little
painting and a bust of me as a child to show you this morning. They
are also displayed. She was fond of remembering that she made several
versions of that little painting one year and gave them as Christmas
gifts to several family members. She did them all with a palette
knife, rather than a paint brush.

My mother was an avid
reader and our home was always filled with books. She loved the
theater and we often attended plays at the Drury Lane theatre or went
downtown to Chicago. The music from Camelot that was playing this
morning was in memory of the fact that this was the last musical we
saw together just a year or so ago.

Mom loved sports --
baseball, football, basketball. She followed it all. Here was a place
I could not go with her. I never could keep the names of the teams
straight let alone the players and the game itself. But she loved it.
At one point in her career, I think it was the Bears football team --
anyway, one of the team members purchased a home where she was
currently selling Real Estate, and several other team members
followed suit. She was ecstatic.

My mother also had a deeply
spiritual side. Raised as a Lutheran, she developed a yearning for
more and more understanding of the spiritual universe. She read, she
attended seminars, she delved into Edgar Cayce materials, and she
meditated and prayed. Simple, final answers were not for her. She
wanted to know for herself. She was always seeking, always yearning
for spiritual serenity.

When I was a young adult, I
often said that I thought my mother had converted to Hinduism,
because I had learned that she was interested in the idea of
reincarnation. Now I realize that you don't have to be a Hindu to
appreciate the justice and reason embedded in the concept of
reincarnation. I can understand how it would attract a person who
wanted always to learn, to grow in knowledge and spirit -- a person
who knew that all that was to be learned and understood could not
possibly be experienced in one lifetime.

The reincarnation piece
made me uncomfortable at the time. But not anymore. My mother was a
Christian, but a Christian with an open, searching mind.

She once asked me how I
developed my spirituality and my desire to enter the ministry. We
certainly weren't weekly churchgoers in my youth. I looked at her in
disbelief. How could she not know that she was my source, the one who
had given me the desire to know, to experience, to catch the
vision?

In seminary, they teach us
that some ministers evolve into priests and others evolve into
prophets. What that means is that some concentrate on the "priestly
functions" of ministry -- the births, the deaths, the sacraments, the
consoling of the bereaved that makes up so much of ministry. Others
concentrate on the "prophetic functions" -- the calling of the people
into a better world. The prophets range from those who rail against
Demon Rum to those who call for Love and Justice for all -- even the
marginalized, the poor, the mentally ill, those whose sexual
orientation is not the same as our own, those whose politics are
different from our own.

My ministry has consisted
of a good measure of both priest and prophet. I have consoled my
share of the bereaved; I've baptized my share of babies and married
my share of persons in love. I've also pounded my share of pulpits in
support of one righteous cause or another.

But my mother represented
yet another focus of ministry, of spirituality, if you will.
"Saintly" is hardly the word. But what do you call the person who
concentrates upon making themselves a more worthy person, who spreads
love like so many candy kisses, who joyfully drives folks to their
medical and other appointments because she truly enjoys that person's
company? One woman called me this week to tell me that my mother was
extra kind to her during bridge classes. My mother was an experienced
bridge player. This woman was a beginner. And my mom was her partner
-- never criticizing, always helpful, and a good deal of fun to play
with.

What do you call the
businesswoman who spends her rare free moments roaming toy stores and
children's apparel shops so that she can send a special package to
her grandchildren living so far away? And the woman who in her quiet
moments focuses her mind on God and how the Universe just might
work?

My mother was certainly
not a saint in the traditional sense of the word. Neither she nor I
would ever aspire to such status. Just seems like saints don't enjoy
life much -- and both she and I are committed Life Enjoyers. But when
the Universe decides to unveil its Secrets, I'm betting that we'll
find more saints among folks like my mother than we'll find among the
priests and prophets of the ministry.

Yeah, my mom had feet of
clay. So do I. The two of us, like many mother-daughter pairs, had
our share of differences, hurt feelings, and
misunderstandings.

A good many preachers might
stand here and remind us all to tell those we love that we love them
every day. To remember the good memories, the positive influences,
the joyful times -- and talk about them frequently,. My mom and I did
this. But, of course, now I wish we had done it even more.

But I am also here to tell
you that I wish we had argued more. I might have learned something.
Now there are such things as fair arguments and unfair ones. Mean
ones and loving ones. I'm talking about the fair, loving argument. My
way of dealing with conflict, or even potential conflict, has always
been to avoid it at all costs. If I knew my mother and I were going
to disagree on a political or personal issue, I steered away from
that topic, period. I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd had the courage to
enter into such talks with abandon, letting the fur fly where it may.
I would have learned something. I would have understood my mother
better and she would have understood me better.

I'm not sure that either of
us had the skill necessary for such a conversational adventure, but I
feel certain that with practice, we could have learned. I'm sorry we
didn't argue more. It might have been fun.

My mother had one friend
with whom she argued all the time. They disagreed on just about
everything, but their friendship lasted 40 years. That takes courage
and trust. Trust that disagree as you may, you'll still be friends
the next day.

I'm almost finished here.
You will soon be able to add your memories of Ellen Shullaw. And I
will be eternally grateful.

And when I say eternally,
perhaps I should speak just a short while on the eternal -- life
beyond this life. I'm not so sure I am a believer in reincarnation,
but I am a believer in a state of being that is warm, safe, and full
of love and understanding. Don't pin me down to the geography, nor
the composite building materials of the streets and gates. But I
believe that each of us, if we want, can reach this safe, loving and
understanding state of being, which for me, would be heaven.

My mother did not want to
leave this life. She told me time after time, she was having too much
fun and that she enjoyed her family and her friends way too much to
ever want to leave them. It was a struggle for her to come to terms
with the fact that leave, she must. But her faith and her spirit and
her love of God carried her through and will envelop her for
eternity. Of this, I am certain.

On this plane, she will
live through us. First, her biological family. There are me, my son,
my daughters, and her great granddaughter living in Alaska and two
younger sisters living in Ohio. We are all a part of her and she is a
part of us. That will never change.

Then there are you, her friends. There is a part
of her that she shared with each of you and a part of you that you
shared with her. You touched and influenced each other. And that will
never change.

And thirdly, my mother and
I have a confidence in eternal life beyond this world, beyond the
limits of death and the finite.

Christ called us to live,
to love, and to fully be all we can be. I believe that life is
infinite, and that we are called to explore its depths and to drink
deeply of its sweetness. I, like many others, believe that we prepare
for eternity, not be being overly "religious" and "keeping all the
rules," but by living fully, loving wastefully, and daring to grow
and be and experience all we can. Making it possible for everyone
else to live, to love, and to be is also part of the Mission. That
was Christ's assignment, and I believe that my mother fulfilled the
assignment with grace, skill, humor, and love.